The United States of America: A Study of the American Commonwealth, Its Natural Resources, People, Industries, Manufactures, Commerce, and Its Work in Literature, Science, Education, and Self-Government - Vol. 2

THERE is no more interesting or instructive chapter in the
history of this country than that which concerns the development
of the singular inventive power of our people. In all the other
branches of thought and action we can trace this part of the intellectual work of our race for some centuries back in the progress of its civilization. The great increase in the readiness with
which mechanical devices have been contrived is particularly
characteristic of modern times. It is true that a certain measure
of skill in dealing with natural powers is characteristic of the
lowest savage, and it is one of the traits which strikingly separates man from the lower animals. It is even as true that all the
stages of his advance from the lowest level of savagery have been
to a great extent attended and accomplished by successive inventions; but this work went forward slowly until after the period
of the middle ages. Even in the matter of weapons for use in
war and in the chase--a class of objects which more than any
other taxed the skill and ingenuity of early peoples--but little
progress was made in the period from 4000 B. C. to the tenth century of our own era. Such inventions as clocks, printing, firearms, and other simple means whereby the interests of man were
advanced by the use of natural powers, quickened the minds
of people to the advantages which might be had through the
exercise of the inventive habit. This stimulus, however, only
operated in a slow manner, and the leaven had affected but few
minds; and the accomplishments in the way of invention which
had been attained at the time when the English colonies were
planted in this country were inconsiderable in number. In the
beginning of the seventeenth century there were probably not a
dozen contrivances in common use among the people which
would have seemed very novel to the educated people of Egypt
two thousand years before the Christian era. At the present
time every large city in the civilized world contains thousands of
machines of more or less value to human society which were not
dreamed of three hundred years ago.

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Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: The United States of America:A Study of the American Commonwealth, Its Natural Resources, People, Industries, Manufactures, Commerce, and Its Work in Literature, Science, Education, and Self-Government.
Volume: 2.
Contributors: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler - Editor.
Publisher: D. Appleton and Company.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1894.
Page number: 134.

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